Daniel R. Schwarz, the Frederic J. Whiton Professor of English Literature and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell.

What's new: Gave keynote address, "The Odyssey of Reading," at a national graduate student comparative literature conference at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in February.

Working on: "In Defense of Reading" and "Undressing the Old Grey Lady: The Transformation of the New York Times"; consulting editor, "Damon Runyon's Broadway Stories."

Quote: Our role as humanists is to focus attention on what is special and distinct in the human enterprise. In my case that has ranged from studying and teaching the magnificent experimental works by Joyce, Conrad and other modernists in literature and the visual arts to, more recently, literary depictions of the horrors of the holocaust. We need always remember that art is how we make sense of the world; literature is how we transform world into words and words into world. Literature and the other arts are a window to who we were and who we are. In our reading and teaching, we need to strike a balance between addressing the ethical and political issues raised by artistic works and the forms by which those issues are presented. As a literature professor my focus is on creativity, and as a cultural historian my focus is on the historical and social contexts in which humans function.